I wish I could know if your questions were for “maybe someday” or if you are actually experiencing real danger.

There is such a huge difference.

If you think your husband might soon kill you or your child, you must get yourselves out of danger and seek guidance from strong Christians in your area.

Let me explain. The reason you stay married to your husband is that you have promised, before God, that you would do so.

It is a covenant between you, your husband, your neighbors, and God.

• You promise your husband, “I will always be here, except for death.”
• You promise your neighbors, “I accept oneness with this man, so no one else can have him, anymore.”
• You promise God, “I will be a picture of your Church and her relationship to Your Son.”

We do not break such solemn promises.

God gives us another covenant responsibility, though, when He gives us a child. You and your husband both have a huge responsibility to make sure the life of your son is good for those around you. It is wrong to bring to birth and then fail to train a child to be an asset to his neighbors.

First, though, you have a responsibility simply to make sure he lives.

If your husband is threatening or trying to kill either you or your child, he is trying to end one of these covenants that you must keep. Therefore, you must do whatever it takes to keep yourself and your child alive. Flee. Hide. Get help, even police help, if needed.

Escaping death does not mean escaping the marriage, though. Once you are certain you are safe, then you must return to your husband, in safety. If this means counseling for either of you, or arrest for your husband, so be it. If he is jailed, you must witness to him, etc., as a loving wife would. You are not divorcing, just trying to keep the marriage covenant and trying to keep the covenant with your son, by trying to stay alive.

I wonder, though, if your questions are hypothetical, that is, if you were supposing and just wondering. How easy to imagine that “the worst” might come, just because some hard things have come!

It is especially easy to imagine worst cases when we are very tired and run down. Is this it?

One day, when looking up Noah Webster’s definition of suffering, I discovered a treasured revelation: He says,

. . . We suffer with anxiety. We suffer by evils past and by anticipating others to come . . .

Anxiety, past evils, and anticipated evils are all suffering we take upon ourselves. This suffering does not befall us; we take it up. It is not happening now, we borrow it from another time zone.

The human creature amazes me.

You have been through a lot to have this child, but so has your husband.

Certainly, it has not been all roses for him to have his wife out of commission for a year and a new baby in the house, to boot. Maybe his irritation and frustration have escalated just when your patience and strength have taken a nosedive. Maybe his decisions are blurry, too. Maybe the best thing for now is to wait.

Wait.

Have courage and wait.

Cheer up and wait.

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photo credit: Vincent van der Pas